Despite
our design specifications as fully articulated graspers
and shapers, we humans are busily constructing an
environment that marginalizes our own corporeal presence.
Our fingers
no longer grip; they click and drag. For better or
worse, the twenty-first century promises to be an
aetherial landscape of images, sounds, and disembodied
voices,
all connected by invisible networks and accessed
through increasingly transparent interfaces. -David Toop,
Sonic
Boom(1)
Originally, I
conceived of Gain as an exhibition of artists who have
subverted the original purpose of certain machines and
technological devices. Now, nearly three years later, almost
all of the artists have changed not only the pieces they
were to exhibit, but also my thoughts on what this show
is about.
Four out of the
six projects originally chosen to appear in Gain have completely
changed. The artists were dealing with subversion, in the
sense that they were mis-using machines or technologies,
or designing and building their own. There was an investigation
of new material in the form of technologies, and the ways
in which they could be altered, tailored, or destroyed.
I found the reception of work of this kind, and new-media
work in general, fetishized and privileged the work's formal
qualities, the 'gadgetry' involved. I wish to focus on
the meanings of the application of technologies in the
arts.
In 2001 much of
the excitement around the technology boom quieted. This
change has a lot to do with the industry's plummeting stock
market value, but maybe also something else. Hannes Leopoldseder
states, on the focus of the 1991 Ars Electronica festival:
In the
year 1991, the computer lost its innocence. On January
17, 1991, at 1:00 a.m. Central European time, to be
exact, when the first laser-controlled bomb met its
target, the Gulf War had started the first 'total electronic
war' (Paul Virilio)...For Ars Electronica, a festival
that has from the beginning always understood itself
in a relational network of art, new technologies, and
society, a new era has begun...Ars Electronica becomes
for the first time the 'Festival after,' a festival
after the first total electronic war.(2)
This statement
is resonant in light of the current war with Afghanistan.
Technology is now commonly employed to cause mass destruction,
and also as a means of communicating those events. Our
experience of this war is one mediated by sophisticated
filters, that do not necessarily bring us any closer to
the reality of the situation.
Major perceptual
changes are occurring as a direct result of the way in
which information is disseminated and understood. Technology
is, at present, smoothly integrated into human existence
and habit. The artists in Gain have created works which
employ both new and old technology, questioning the comfortable
position it holds in our daily routines. As a result of
this integration, we have become, in many ways, one step
removed from direct contact with our environment and each
other. The artists in Gain have created works which directly
engage the human and the technological in a way which does
not privilege one or the other, but sets up a reciprocal
relationship. Gain is testament to the fact that technology
can still exist inside the realm of humanity: '...(we)
must understand the need for 'high touch' not as the consequence
but rather as the control of 'high tech.'(3) The title
Gain refers to the ways in which artists are addressing the
effects of a technologically inundated society. Rather
than focusing on what we have to lose, these artists are
trying to conceive of what we have to gain through the
creative application and critical evaluation of technology.
Ruth Anderson:
Time and Tempo, 1984. Time and Tempo is an interactive
bio-feedback installation, consisting of a clock, a small
box, and two galvanic skin resistance sensors, which the
viewer attaches to two fingers. The speed of the clock's
second hand is controlled by the bio-electrical currents
passing through the fingers, influenced in turn by the
viewer's mental and physical state. Anderson's work utilizes
familiar technology in order to create an interactive relationship
with the viewer which is quiet and meditative. Time and
Tempo allows the viewer an opportunity to literally slow
down time, a concept increasingly hard to grasp in our
presently accelerated environment.
Ken Linehan: Speaker
Dodecahedron, 2000-01 Ken Linehan explores the thin, hyphenated
line that slips between the realms of the scientific and
the para-scientific. His work seeks to better understand
the ways in which technology brings us into confrontation
with this line. Satellite technology has allowed us to
see alien worlds through radio telescopes, but it has also
provided us a sort of, "out of body", view of our own world.
A view where we become alien. Robots search for signs of
life on remote planets, while at that same moment they
exist as signs of life themselves, our lives and the thin
probabilities upon which they apparently do stand. F.D.
Drake, in Murmurs of Earth, a document of the voyager space
program, addresses the subject of this experiment, "There
is a sphere of radio transmissions about thirty light years
thick expanding outward at the speed of light, announcing
to every star that it envelops, that the earth is full
of people." Speakerdoedecahedron: system 2.1 uses a multi-channel
mapping process to create an audio model of global radio
phenomenon.
Kaffe Matthews:
wap side up, 2001 Performance will take place Saturday,
January 12, 4-6 p.m. at apexart wap side up is a 3-dimensional
audio environment which takes listeners through a series
of spaces, while they sit absolutely still. Using the sound
of apexart's gallery space, recorded via cell phone, as
source for her composition, Matthews is able to draw out
the subtle and hidden complexities of our environment which
are remarkably important to our psychological understanding
of space. Particularly relevant is her use of the cell
phone as recording device. Matthews is typically present
in the space she records, but through this method she removes
both herself and hence much control over the nature of
the recording. This process parallels the very nature of
cell phone conversation itself. It is one which allows
for more frequent communication, but the distortion and
staccato nature of the conversation often results in mis-communication
and lost calls.
Andrea Polli:
The Fly's Eye, 2001 The Fly's Eye is an interactive video
environment which draws its inspiration from the structure,
function, and significance of the eye of the fly (the simplest
living eye), in relationship to the study of human sensation
and perception. Polli has imbued each technical element
of her piece with both human and insect characteristics.
This work subtly illustrates the importance of the organic
within a highly sophisticated technological environment.
While the tools of scientific research have radically changed
over the last century, they continue to rely on human input,
touch, and intelligence.
Scanner (Sound)
and Katarina Matiasek (Image): Echo Days, 2001 Echo
Days is an audio-video environment which uses decelerated and
thus audible echolocation sounds of bats flying through
cities and landscapes. The audio consists of entirely reflected
sound, and the video is a series of after images. The overall
effect of the piece is one of delay: the images that we
see and the sounds we hear come to us 'after the fact.' An
analogy is set up between the bat's perception of reality
and our own perception in a technologically mediated environment.
Laetitia Sonami:
performance of Birds without Feet Can't Land Performance
will take place Saturday, January 12, 4-6 p.m. at apexart
Birds without Feet Can't Land is a performance
with light and live electronic sound. Sonami will use her
Lady's Glove
to control the filaments of light bulbs in silent counterpoint
to thick sonic textures of data, human, and animal sounds.
The Lady's Glove is a gestural controller for the hand,
embedded with sensors which track the slightest movement
of each finger, hand, and arm. The work physically integrates
technology with the human body, creating a symbiotic relationship
between the two.
Kelly Taxter © 2001
1. Toop, David.Sonic
Boom: The Art of Sound. London: Hayward Gallery, 2000,
p. 107.
2. Ars Electronica: Facing the Future, ed.Timothy
Druckrey, Forward. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, 1999, p. 8.
3. Ibid, p. 6.
PRESS RELEASE
GAIN: The
amount of amplification (voltage, current or power)
of an audio signal,
usually expressed in units of dB (i.e., the ratio of
the output level to the input level). For example, amplifying a voltage signal
by a factor of two is stated as a voltage gain increase of 6 dB.
Gain is
an exhibition of works which address the intersection of
artist and machine. Through subversion, invention, and
critical address, each artist is responding to the integral
role technology plays in daily life. The formats used include
sound, sculpture, video, and multi-media interactive environments.
In each instance the artist has devised a unique method
through which to create their works, illustrating the new
sonic and visual languages developing as a result of investigation
into new and old technologies and machines. All of the
artists are contributing to this language, by designing
new technologies, or adding to the functionality and conceptions
of those already in existence. The title Gain, taken
from a sound engineering handbook, alludes to these additions
as an amplification of ideas.
Ruth Anderson presents a
simple installation comprised of a clock and two galvanic
skin resistance sensors which attach to two fingers.
Hers is a work which utilizes old and familiar technology
in order to create an interactive relationship with the
viewer which is quiet and meditative. Andrea Polli also
works with an interactive environment, compised of surveillance
equipment, custom software, and the viewer. Her work
draws its inspiration from the structure, function, and
significance of the eye of the fly, in relationship to
the study of human sensation and perception. Scanner
and Katarina Matiasek present a collaborative video and
audio environment, Echo
Days, which uses decelerated and thus audible echolocation
sounds of bats flying through cities and landscapes for
an unsettling stroboscopic composition. As it entirely
exists of reflected sound, it secretly transports absent
structures. Ken Linehan has created a Speaker Dodecahedron which
floats in space and emits 10 discreet channels of sound.
Linehan is working with the shortwave radio spectrum,
in order to translate the wide variety of transmission
types within the shortwave spectrum into a series of
time-lapsed audio maps. The speaker dodecahedron is also
a work which utilizes older technology, investigating
global communication before the birth of the internet,
in an arena commonly overlooked yet constantly active.
Kaffe Matthews created a sound work, which she describes
as, "A three dimensional sound piece that will take
visitors through the gallery space as they sit absolutely
still." Matthews uses the sound of the gallery itself,
recorded over a cellular phone, to compose a sound piece
which will then be played back via special headphones.
Matthews will also perform live, using her custom software LiSA.
Finally, Laetitia Sonami, using her "Lady Glove",
performs Birds without Feet (Cannot Land). A performance
with light and sound. The glove will control the filaments
of light bulbs in silent counterpoint to thick sonic
textures of data sounds, voices, and animals.
A color brochure
containing an essay by Kelly Taxter will be available
free of charge.
Please contact apexart for further information. Hours are Tuesday to Saturday,
11-6.
Gain was supported
in part with assistance from the British Council
*selected unsolicited
proposal
|